As the Ford government puts the wheels in motion to begin removing bike lanes from three Toronto thoroughfares, an expert who helped advise the city on their installation is warning the cost could be significant.
The province has confirmed plans to remove bike lanes from Bloor Street, University Avenue and Yonge Street as part of new legislation that will also make it harder for cities to build them on arterial roads going forward.
The Ministry of Transportation has promised to pay cities, particularly Toronto, the costs incurred if they are forced to remove bike lanes but has not offered specifics for how much removal could come to.
A spokesperson for the City of Toronto told Global News the bike lanes on Bloor Street West took between three and four months in phases to install and cost roughly $4.5 million.
A new route down the west side of University Avenue took almost nine months to install at a cost of $130,000, while ongoing work on the east side of the street is estimated to cost $836,000. Bike lanes were installed on Yonge Street during the pandemic as part of a $3.8 million, city-wide expansion of cycling infrastructure.
One expert, who helped the city with its cycling infrastructure plans after the pandemic, said removing the bike lanes would be as costly as installing them.
Margaret Parkhill, business unit director for mobility at Arcadis, suggested removing the bike lanes would not be especially simple — particularly because they came as part of broader changes to things like the timing of traffic lights or the configuration of sidewalks.
“Any change to the street — whether it is adding something or removing something — I would expect very likely to cost the same as installing something,” she told Global News.
“And also consider it’s not just taking out some bollards for the bike lanes. It’s the signage, the pavement marking, the operational changes to the intersections. So it needs to be well-planned and designed to understand what’s the scope of the change.”
Parkhill helped the city with its pandemic cycling infrastructure plan, including changes to Yonge Street the government plans to reverse.
A spokesperson for Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria said the changes would go ahead because the government believes the bike lanes are making congestion worse.
“The 1.2 per cent of people who commute by bike shouldn’t be clogging primary roads for the over 70 percent of people who drive. It’s just common sense,” they said in a statement.
“We all know which lanes are causing further congestion across our city. Those are the ones we’ll be focusing on as we work through the review process.”
The government has started the process of removing the lanes through the posting of regularity changes. The changes will not come into effect until after the legislation to restrict future bike lanes also passes at Queen’s Park.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has blasted the government for the decision, suggesting it will create more congestion, not less.
“Ripping up our roads will make people less safe, make traffic worse, and put lives at risk. Full stop,” she wrote in a recent social media post. “I challenge the Premier to talk to people who have lost loved ones on our roads and hear their stories.”
Ontario NDP MPP Jessica Bell said the removal of bike lanes “divides and distracts” from the important issues.
“We need real solutions for congestion — like finally opening the Eglinton LRT, and making the 407 toll-free for trucks, instead of cheap politics that pit road users against one another,” she said in a statement.